A lifetime of Islands: Island 51 - St Martins, Isles of Scilly

Saturday, 19 March 2011

Island 51 - St Martins, Isles of Scilly

St Martins has a population of around 140. There are 3 main settlements on the island - the imaginatively titled Higher, Middle and Low Towns. There is one pub (the Seven Stones Inn), one hotel, a couple of café/tea gardens and an excellent bakery.

There are 2 churches on St Martins - Anglican and Methodist. The Anglican church was built in 1683 and rebuilt in 1866 after it was damaged by lightning. The Methodist chapel at Higher Town was built in 1845.

In 1989 a 3 foot high stone with what seems to be a face carved on it, was found on Chapel Down, where the remains of a medieval chapel are also located. There is a Bronze Age burial chamber on Cruther's Hill.

Kelp was burnt on the island from the late 17th century to the mid 19th century to produce soda ash. This was exported to the mainland for glass making. In 1834 Augustus Smith leased all of the Isles of Scilly from the Duchy of Cornwall. He introduced modern farming methods, including flower growing. This is still continued on a small scale. The small fields are surrounded by shelterbelt hedges of euonymus and pittosporum.

I visited St Martin's for the day in March 2002 and 2003 and returned again in March 2014. When I visited in the middle of March 2014 all the cafes, the pub and the hotel were closed either permanently or because the summer season hadn't started. However the excellent shop was open, which was just as well, as I needed to buy some plasters, having caught my thumb on a sharp piece of wire on a gate.

Visiting St Martin's in mid-March proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be, as only one visitors' boat was running from St Mary's and they wouldn't go to St Martin's, as none of the cafes or the pub were open. The lady in the Tourist Information Centre in Hugh Town was very doubtful when I asked about visiting St Martin's. However she did eventually give me the telephone number of the man who runs the St Martin's Boat Service for the residents of St Martin's. However when I rang him he said he wasn't coming across to St Mary's again until the afternoon and there wouldn't be time that day for a day trip but to ring him the following day. A few minutes later while I was standing on the quay at Hugh Town wondering whether to go to St Agnes for the second time in a few days or to walk round the coast of St Mary's for a second time, a St Martin's Boat Services boat arrived and tied up. I asked the man on it if it was possible to visit St Martin's that day and first of all he quoted me £42 for a private charter, which I declined but then he said if I came back at 11.30 am (it was 10 am at this point) he was going anyway to fetch someone, so I could go for £6 each way and could come back at 4pm. I agreed to this and came back at 11.30. I waited for a few minutes and then the man appeared and led me to a Bryher Boat. It turned out that after I had spoken to him he realised that one of his RIB inflatable compartments had been punctured and the boat therefore wasn't usable. He had a timetabled list of people he had to transport to or from St Martin's during the day and the man from Bryher Boats was helping him out. I was dropped off at Lower Town Quay, which was deserted, as the adjacent hotel is currently closed. At this point I hoped he would remember to come back at 4pm to collect me from Higher Town Quay. I needn't have worried, as he had about a dozen people to transport from St Mary's to St Martin's at 4pm, although I was the only one making the return journey to St Mary's. It was quite a lumpy journey back, as it was a very windy day but the boat went so fast that we were back in Hugh Town in about 15 minutes.